The simple truth of growing older is that you end up with more of your life having already passed than the time you have yet to pass... and thus, you're perhaps inclined to have more things you recall from the memory files.
Music is a great "trigger" of memories... a certain sound can have the ability to send us "time traveling."
Earlier today, I was reading an assortment of politically-inclined blogs and articles, and the thing that struck me most about them was the strident tones of hatred and accusation people of different opinions and beliefs seem to have these days.
Maybe it has always been so, and my memory is just short... but I don't think so.
Anyway, a particular song from the early 80's came on a playlist I was listening to, and suddenly my mind was transported back to my college daze in Austin, Texas...
I lived in an apartment caddy-corner and upstairs from four deeply devout Southern Baptist brothers from Waco, Texas, 100 miles up the Interstate.
Even though they thought me a complete heathen and tried their sincerest to "save" me for the two years or so we lived in the same building, we actually became decent friends. They were about as helpless as young men could possibly be and would probably have been able to actually burn water — had they ever tried to cook — and consequently developed a healthy appreciation for my culinary skills.
At first, they were a little suspicious because they more or less believed that cooking was "woman's work," but they got over that when I pointed out that many of the world's greatest chefs are men.
Regardless, we essentially had nothing in common, aside from liking to eat, and two of the brothers played golf... and sometimes all of us would go on training runs together in the early morning. Other than that, they were conservative and deeply religious; I was liberal and godless; I drank and listened to music they felt was sinful; they prayed and worshiped Jesus.
The point of this story, though, was my feeling a bit baffled several times by some of my other college friends coming over and wondering out loud "I'm surprised you don't HATE them?!?!"
Why would I?
Although they kept thinking I should become Godly and be saved, their being "who they were" had no bearing on — nor was it a challenge to — who I was, as a person.
That was my 22-year old self speaking, 38 years ago. I'm pretty much still in that frame of mind.
And then I realized that it's not differing politics, economics, religion or sexuality that distresses me about our modern world, it's people's broad-based vehemence in condemning anyone who thinks, looks, talks or walks differently from them that gets me down.
Why is do so many seem to be so damn threatened by differing perspectives... even if those perspectives will have no impact whatsoever on their lives?
(Fast forward a few hours)
Subsequently, I fell into one of the many strange rabbit holes of the 3xdubya, this one being watching YouTube clips from a number of people who all had in common that they were (a) all US born citizens, (b) had all lived outside the US for 7 or more years and (c) were now back, living in the US again.
After watching maybe 5-6 clips, some patterns started to emerge. The one that was most significant and pertinent to this post was that these expats all noticed how almost addicted people in the US seem to be to "individualism" and the attendant "rights" they feel they have to assert that individualism on top of anyone else's equally fiercely defended individualism. And in the course of doing so, invariably throwing any kind of collective good or common decency under the bus.
It was funny and even slightly surreal to hear this expressed by US citizens who'd voluntarily returned home after living outside the US... because they were able to vocalize the odd dis-ease I have tried to identify for the 35-odd years I have lived in this country... going back to my college daze and people asking me how come I didn't hate those who weren't in alignment with my worldview.
And so touchy, at times. I recall working on a "group project" for a computer class and I remember one young woman in our group replying to my (sincere) comment that it was a shame there wasn't better public transportation in Austin (in 1982).
"Wow, that's a communist thing to say! White people don't ride the bus."
She was totally sincere and serious.
In turn, this made me think back to a few years ago, to when we had our small local art gallery and gift store. Over a period of several years, I became good friends with several of our local "characters," one of them an uber-right wing intellectual... and again I faced this thing of "liberal" people not understanding why I didn't "hate" him, while he didn't understand why I could stand to be around "libtards."
Some of these people wouldn't even be in the store together at the same time, purely based on their differing political views.
We're all just trying to make it through this strange thing called life, and this sensation of constantly having to be on the offensive strikes me as an exhausting waste of time and energy.
I've been trying to poke around in the underlying psychology and keep coming back to a thin common thread: When we go overboard in our attachment to individual rights we also create a dynamic in which it seems like everyone lives in a sort of pervasive fear of having "their way" somehow being taken away or maybe diluted as a result of the mere presence of someone else who subscribes to a different way.
It's really just "entitlement" by a different name...
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
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Created at 20210219 17:55 PST
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